ISSUE – Jan. 31 | Navigating Mid-Success

Sam Altman of YC
When you start a startup, you get pushed off the side of a cliff with a bag of aerospace parts. You hope they are the parts for a spaceship, and they look like they might be, but it’s impossible to tell when they’re all in a bag.

So you start figuring out how the parts fit together as you fall. Every once in a while, it turns out you do have the parts for a spaceship—the market is huge, you have a great product, there’s a natural monopoly, and you have a credible path to be the winner. In that case, there’s plenty of advice available for you.